I just ran another heroic around 2:50 CST on Thursday to test some stuff again. Ran a heroic VH intentionally with people of not great gear (mixed heroics and 10 man gear). I could feel my mana hurting. The new rapture is almost compeltely negligible really, like it didn't even feel like an important mana regen tool. I sat to drink after a death out in the world as well when someone rezzed me. After the rez I cast Divine Spirit, sat, drank. In the time for me to drink I didnt even get a full mana bar, through the entire drink with all my spirit (somewhere over 1k I know). So even a heroic that is non-spammy I could feel the changes and the OFSR is a joke. Great.

For a Disc priest POH will be a situational spell.. like say Loatheb.

If you plan on making PoH one of your primary heals you may want to consider a Hybrid spec catering to boosting PoH or just going full on Holy.

Everything Disc screams single target healer (with some added raid utility) Blizzard is shaping Disc toward using PWS Penance and FH as our primary spells. If you get stuck in situations with heavy raid damage consider glyph of POM or 2 piece t7 bonus.

The problem is it doesn't scream single target, but it SHOULD. Blizz keeps bouncing back and forth on their opinion as mentioned before. They give group viability then take it away. Give single target viability then take it away. This is really a give and take on both sides with the nerfing winning out.

I guess I'm just not seeing things the same way you are. What spell "rotation" are you using? Unfortunately I'm used to pug heroics where most of the DPS is doing <1200 dps and still manage to end most fights in that silly little instance with 75% to 100% mana.

What is your spell "rotation"?

In a 5/10 man setting your tank should always have weakened soul on them 3 stacks of grace and POM should always be on CD, if you maintain this only fights like Patchwerk and like say, Anub Rhekan during locust phase should you really be casting anything other than the spells mentioned + penance. Even then only cast GHeal when Penance is on cooldown which will be even less often now.

Pretty sure it isn't about rotation as I used to end 10 3d with nearly full mana. Granted things changed a little here but in heroics previously I would be pulling faster then the tank could handle to to have more work to do and push myself. Here I ended boss fights around 50% mana, yes I know not a big deal BUT I should be horribly outgearing the content. I have a lot of BiS's (our guild hasn't had the best luck with drops and we have a "different" loot system) and I actually considered taking off some pieces today just to see if I could drop down to where normal heroic runners might be. I dunno, I keep pushing people to get a ptr raid on today, tonight, something. If my guild doesn't run one on PTR I would totally help someone else heal in theirs if they get one set up and need another disc healer, Cynic (and Cinic I made two copies of the toon after I got legs of KT Tueday night heh and to try things a little differently) in Reawaken on PTR PVE.

Sounds like business as usual then, I am looking at this from the top of the scrub level of raiding. Disc requires better gear than Holy to be effective in a single healer environment simply because your spells on heal for about 70% of what any other healer would. So yeah in situations where you are dealing with idiots who don't know what the skull is for are pulling aggro off the DK tank who pointed in the wrong direction half the time, you are going to burn through your mana in a hurry as there is no way to preempt the damage. No class/spec can overcome that even now with current regen.


If I had gear like yours I would delete my female night elf alt :x

I am trying to get the guy from my guild who runs WWS over for raids tonight so I can look at better numbers but they are dragging their feet. I really just want to get into a raid and have WWS running to get real solid data to compare to my numbers previously. The mana back from rapture seemed negligible but again, I don't have numbers to prove it yet.

This may sound weird, but even with outgearing the instance, i would expect that one SHOULD have to change your spell rotation.

Part of the problem i think from Blizz's perspective was that our healing choices ignored mana cost completely. During raids i can cast whatever spell i want, whenever i wanted without any concern to efficiency. FH the tank at full health "just in case"? Sure, why not, i have mana to spare. PoH when only 2 party members need any sort of heal? Sure, why not? But that is exactly the sort of thing Blizzard is targeting. It is not a good thing when i haven't even thought of using a mana pot in nearly 2 1/2 months.

I think the better test will be, can you still heal instance/raids and be okay on mana using a new rotation that does care about mana efficiency?

I would love to see people's feedback on a Sarth +3 run that requires a change to spell casting and style and hear about the results. I suspect though that too many people on the PTR will heal like they do on live, and see the loss in mana and conclude that we are too nerfed. Remember, pally healers should see their regen nerfed as well, as do druids and probably Holy Priests. Everyone should have to change how they heal. (Maybe not resto shamans since mana has been an issue for them still).

Rotation will be penance on CD, Penance on weakened soul CD, PoM on CD. The least common multiple of the cooldowns is 30sec so I'll use that for my maths.

every 30 sec there will be 5 penances, 2 PWS, and 3 PoM cast on your main target. Penance is nearly always cast with Borrowed time active so I'll put its cast at 1.5s and increase the PWS casts to 5. The PoM and PWS are instant so with haste ill put them at 1.25s.

5x1.5 + 5x1.25 + 3x1.25 = 17.5s of casting reserved for those spells.

You have 12.5s of additional time using these parameters. PWS to save near death players or providing extra heals for your tank will be your main use of this time, but I would consider it almost irresponsible to not fit in one PoH in that time to help your raid healers. The benefit will be noticeable in 25mans and crucial in 10mans. I'm not concerned about heroics.

I agree the nature of the tree is in flux, but it's the PTR. The PTR exists to be in flux. I think that stating that they've been unclear about whether Disc is supposed to party-heal vs. single-target heal is inaccurate. I think the error here is separating healing into only two categories: en masse raid healing (ala CoH/PoH) and true single target healing.

Discipline has never been a raid healer in any real sense (and unless PW:B is implemented and turns out like a shield version of CoH - which I doubt - it's not looking like it will become one). Even when PoH becomes group-targetable, it is still inefficient due to both the high mana cost and the fact that it is still group-limited. As mentioned, even PoH is better suited to use by Holy priests. Discipline priests have it and can use it when required to, primarily in 5-mans, but it plays against the talents given to us.

The nature of the talents given to us - a fast, very strong, reactive heal on a CD, encouraging multi-target casting of PW:S via BT, the fact that PW:S and DA give mitigation thus giving a chance to heal another target, etc. - make it clear that multi-target healing is what Blizzard intends as Disc's strength. This can be 'multi-tank' healing, if you will, or this can be primarily tank plus random raid members when needed. This isn't really raid healing, but then again this isn't really single-target healing either.

The comparison of Discipline to Paladins is a particularly apt one, since the addition of Beacon in WotLK release lets Paladins fill a similar niche. Beacon is more powerful but also somewhat less flexible.

This is why the initial Grace change was so odd (and why I think it was removed so quickly). That change really did fly against the strengths of the class, but I think it's likely that the current (multi-target) implementation is likely to be the final one.

Overall I think that the only real nerf is to our regen, and I think most people would agree it needed a nerf. Our PW:S throughput has been improved, as has our overall throughput (-2s on Penance, +1% haste, +3% crit, and an extra +3% heal to Grace, not counting the Imp. Flash Heal crit) and our raid utility (3% DR to the entire raid, the mana/rage/RP restore).

On paper the PW:S Rapture mana returns and reduced costs look fine. Though there are some complications.

@ Tweaksys, If you were using PW:S a good amount you might be running into the situation that concerned me about the way it functions right now. Which is the timing of PW:S's getting consumed. What I fear is that it will be impossible to try and maximize the mp5 return from Rapture.

If you look at situations where damage is fairly predictable, Saph Aura, Maly Vortex, ... etc. Shields will be consumed at very near equal distances apart compared to the application. So if you use 5 consecutive GCDs to hit people with PW:S you can pretty much count on that only 1 of those will proc rapture. So in those situations you would cast as many PW:S as necessary/efficient and ensure you have at least 1 "setup to get consumed" every 12 seconds. This is a relatively easier scenario where you can try to gain 2-4 returns per minute.

The situation you are dealing with though is extremely varied and unpredictable damage for the most part. So if you cast PW:S on the tank at every opportunity of WS fading. You have 4 casts per minute, but only reliably 2 procs per minute. Which at 25k mana is 104mp5, probably 10-25% of what you are used too. If you get lucky with the RNG you could get a proc for each shield but that is unlikely.

To have any control over the Rapture gains in a scenario where you rely on just trying to capitalize on using PW:S on one target.
- You would need to know the incoming damage pattern intimately.
- Be capable of predicting when a the target is going to avoid damage.
- Account for DA procs on the fly, as DA gets consumed before PW:S from my testing.
From the above you would then need to dynamically figure how long it will take for PW:S to get consumed at a future application point on the target and then...
- Watch for the previous PW:S to fade and proc Rapture... Note the time
- Calculate 12 - average time till consumption...
- Take the calculated time and add that to the proc time then apply PW:S at that moment.

The above is true for any scenario in which PW:S can not be expected to be instantly consumed upon application. It still only gives you a higher probability that the consumption will be after the 12 second mark. Then for every second beyond 12 it takes for the next one to get consumed reduces the rapture return mp5 by ~4%.

I am ok with the reduced regen. But just looking at the difficulty of utilizing the new Rapture mechanic to its potential, I find it well beyond the players control.

I think you summed it up perfectly. Anyway I'm gonna be pretty sad if PW:Barrier is really not going to be part of our spellbook, it sounded like it could be an effective tool to fill one of our healing needs. I've always liked PoH, but as it seems to remain group-restricted feels like a step backwards at raid organization. Priests (especially Holy) will have to be the main ones asking melee dps to be put together in the same group etc., all over again.

Much more importantly, if you end an 8 minute fight with more than 13k mana IF you maximize your usage of shadow fiend and use a runic mana pot or potion of nightmares, you should be fine.

Popping fiend right before hero, using nightmare pots and runics, and generally concentrating on things and minimize overhealing (which we all more or less have been doing simply because of the overabundance of mana) will make us fine.

Also as we progress into Ulduar replenish returns are only going up.

well of course in certain situations healing multiple targets is possible as it is right now. In a best case scenario though a Disc priest will be about as effective at multi target healing as a paladin..

popping a 6k shield followed by a GCD so that you can pop a 1 second cast 4.5k heal on something else is not exactly the picture of efficiency. If you're going to do that just skip the nonsense and spec into CoH and heal them both for 3k

Unfortunately Disc will not be the Holy Spec replacement and we will be a niche healer. Our primary tools are damage prevention, our damage recovery is weak at best.

FH is generally the last thing you want to be wasting BT procs on when tank healing.

Not totally used to the changes and what will have to come with them and this was obviously a PUG, but we got a few boss kills in without wipes on PTR in naxx 25. I am hoping this link works to show the WWS link comparing this PUG to my normal guild. The pug kill was 3 minutes 47 seconds, my guild kill was 2 minutes 41 seconds(slow cause we over stacked healers for some reason this night.) The numbers raw:

My Guild:Rapture 26,762 Mana 79ticks 338avg 507Max
Pug: Rapture 6,015 Mana 11ticks 546 avg 547Max

My Guild: Wow Web Stats
Pug:Wow Web Stats

So in a fight that was nearly a minute more I gained around 20,700 mana less. Again, I am not that used to the new style but really? AFAIK I always had Shields running on at least the tank and was trying to bounce em on myself when it looked like I had the timer right. The pug tank was in Naxx 25 gear.
Holler if the links don't work or I did it wrong somehow, just installed WWS for this -.-
Edit- Just ran math and noticed that I could have been able to have 4 more ticks of rapture if I had it proced every 15 seconds even so that needs work but I did have 16 borrowed time's proc. But thats still only 2186 mana at the average rate.

Based on this template, does it seems reasonable to put only one point in "Grace" and complete "Focus will" to 3 to gain the last % of crit?
As now with the 15sec duration of grace, a 50% chance (with one point) to proc it, can be sufficient. If we think off a pure one target healing the only problem I see is the first seconds of the fight where grace will not full stack.

[edit] With this point we can also take "Desperate prayer" if some fight in Ulduar need it

Penance provides a 3 buff chances for 600 mana. Using two penances before the pull followed by ~2 sec of drinking makes this a non-issue.

This confirms some "napkin math" theorycrafting I did prior to the PTR. My numbers were the following:

-build-	mana returned	% of total regen
3.0.9	33,505	31%
3.1	6,187	9%

So basically 27K (81%) less mana returned from rapture than before. Note that this assumes 0 change in healing technique, so that's probably why your losses weren't quite as stark.

There is no buff to meditation. Its simply to cover up what you lose via the OO5SR.

Example:

Live:
3000 mana regen NOT casting (OO5SR)
900 mana regen from Meditation (30%)

OO5SR regen is being nerf'd in 3.1 though. If your regen becomes 2000 OO5SR then 30% of that is 600. The meditation change is to makeup for the loss of 'while casting' mana regen.

Test:
2000 mana regen NOT casting (OO5SR)
1000 mana regen from Meditation (50%)

Yes, i apologize for my previously incorrect belief that the 50% change to meditation could be a buff as they have decreased the coefficient. Though i think the previous post can cause confusion.

The change to the coefficient didn't just change OFSR regen, it had to also change IFSR regen. The increase to meditation is to compensate for the loss in the IFSR regen, such that casters (and disc healers) who are rarely OFSR shouldn't see their passive regen change much. Blizz wanted change OFSR regen but leave the casters and people who don't rely on the FSR to not be affected directly.

Btw I find it ironic that your illustration shows an increase in IFSR between live and PTR.. which if assuming 100% IFSR for us would be a buff.

That's because the example is slightly off. The nerf to OFSR regen is 40%, not 33%. So:

3000 mana regen NOT casting (OO5SR)
900 mana regen from Meditation (30%)

Nerfing OFSR by 40% and buffing Med from 30 to 50, gives:

Test:
1800 mana regen NOT casting (OO5SR)
900 mana regen from Meditation (50%)

Viola! IFSR number are now the same.